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66 What Books and Words Make Up the Christian Scriptures?
Testament, it did not confer upon them any authority which they did
not already possess, but simply recorded their previously established
canonicity. 5
That list of books, with the traditional apostolic connections, consists
of:
• Matthew: apostle
• Mark: Peter’s interpreter and assistant (as Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis,
AD 60–140, wrote: “Mark became Peter’s interpreter and
wrote accurately all that he remembered” 6 )
• Luke: close associate and partner of Paul (known from the book
of Acts)
• John: apostle
• Thirteen epistles of Paul: apostle
• Hebrews: from the Pauline circle (as we see in Heb. 13:22, where
the author refers to “our brother Timothy”)
• James: Jesus’s brother who was closely associated with the original
twelve apostles (Gal. 1:19)
• 1 and 2 Peter: apostle
• 1, 2, and 3 John: apostle
• Jude: brother of Jesus and James (Jude 1; Matt. 13:55)
• Revelation: John the apostle
Compelling Allegiance
When F. F. Bruce refers to “their previously established canonicity,”
the question remains how that authority compelled the allegiance of
the early Christians. What we have argued is that this question and our
question about the divine origin and truth and authority of the Bible are
essentially the same question. What this means for our approach in this
book is that we should draw our chapters on the canon to a close and
move to the more fundamental question of how any of us can know that
these books are the word of God. Our question is the same question the
church faced as the canon was emerging.
What we have seen is that the twenty-seven books that make up
5
F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1963), 112–13. Other partial lists
of the emerging canon are known from much earlier than this first complete list in AD 393.
6
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 3.39.15.